My Crunch has Gone Stale
I am going to make an announcement today. A revelation that might not make me any friends and may hurt my credibility as the Most Awesome Mother ever, but it’s time to stop living a lie. I cannot deceive you any longer.
I have failed at cloth diapering.
To be honest, the only reason I tried it was because it was trendy and cute and I convinced myself we could, I don’t know, take a trip to Paris or something with all the money we were going to save. Although if we DID save enough money to go to Paris I certainly wouldn’t want to carry around crap-filled pants the whole time. That right there should clue you in on how dedicated I was to cloth diapering. It was more “awwww, look at the polka dots!” and less “I love being environmentally responsible and making wise choices!” I’m kind of shallow.
It’s a shame, really, because I DO think cloth is a great way to go. I loved not having to buy disposables all the time and gloated a little bit at every person I saw with a whole cart full of Pampers at the warehouse store. Using cloth prevents so much trash and waste from going into landfills. You avoid all the weird chemicals in disposables, especially the kind that gave Little Evan a horrible rash. Using cloth does save money, especially when you use them for multiple kids – which, hey, sounds perfect for me! I have multiple kids!
But. The poop. OH MY GOD SO MUCH POOP.
My slow slide away from cloth started with the morning sickness. Getting pregnant directly coincided with Little Evan weaning, which meant no more nice, easy breastfed poops. Instead, my toddler started producing GIANT SMELLY MAN SIZED CRAP. The kind I could barely stand to be in the same zip code with, let alone carry around until I could shake it out into a toilet. And if it was…sticky? Forget about it. Anything that required the diaper sprayer also required 20 minutes of heaving into the toilet thanks to my insane sense of smell and hair-trigger gag reflex. AREN’T YOU DYING TO HEAR MORE ABOUT THIS?
So we used disposables. Then the night time peeing got totally out of hand and going back to cloth would have resulted in even MORE soaked PJ’s and sheet changes. We bought another box of Luvs. And another. Then my cloth stash started to smell sort of…weird so I had plans to strip them all and sort the ones I could use with the new baby into her dresser. I totally Googled “how to strip your cloth diapers” and everything. But I was tired and still didn’t feel so well and wasn’t really interested in doing anything that would create more laundry for myself so I never did.
Do you want to hear MORE excuses? KIDNEY STONES. Boom. Hard to enforce the cloth diaper use from the hospital.
Now, with two in diapers and no end to that scenario in sight, I feel like all I do ALL DAY is look at dirty butts. Pooping is Caroline’s only real skill right now so she’s decided to dedicate herself to what she’s good at. It is not at all uncommon for her to poop immediately after a diaper change, only to do it AGAIN after the next one. That’s three poops in less than 5 minutes, which, multiplied by 5 times a day means I would need approximately EIGHTYBAZILLIONTEEN baby-sized diapers to avoid several loads of laundry daily. It doesn’t help that Little Evan is apparently competing for the title of Poop Champion and is no longer on the twice-a-day schedule.
So. Much. Poop.
I think once Caroline gets a little older I might switch her back to cloth. I really did like it for the 4 months I did use them. And when we start *ACK* potty training Little Evan I think the cloth might be a good transition between disposables and underpants. Because I still have all these diapers. And they do save money. And they are super cute. And I do like being a cloth diaper mom.
But for now, please accept my apology for not being quite as crunchy as I used to be.
Tags: baby evan, Caroline, cloth diapers, crunchy, hippie, parenting, poop, secret shame
I just laughed through most of this post. We do not cloth diaper but every time I read about a blogger who does and who swears by them and then I see their cute bums I want to. And then I start to think about the logistics. And, the reality is that while I see all the benefits, the smell alone makes me gag and hold my breath. So, people can hate but for us disposables work and my nose thanks me for it.
i didnt really get H into cloth untill he was a couple months old and even now he is only in them like half the time. the poop? its a problem. maybe i’m just a wimp.
Girl, you and me both. I’m glad I’m not the only one. I tried. TWICE. I loved it. My husband hated it! I tried to pressure him but he does not care about sending diapers to the landfill. That’s just not where his heart is. I cannot force him to do something he hates.
And believe me, with two babies it’s messy!
Don’t feel bad. We tried and that’s all we can do :)
You crack me up. I’m with you though, I’ve thought about cloth diapering but more because I think it’s cute than the actual saving the environment thing. Realistically, it just wouldn’t work for us. Good for you for trying it out!
You made a good-faith effort, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. No apologies.
I keep saying I’m going to do cloth diapering when I have #3, but I just don’t know. The logistics scare me, but now that I have a washer and a dryer I have no excuse, right? I just remember how badly BF baby poop stains and I would feel really badly about putting a stained diaper on my kid, even if it was clean (Yeah, I have stain issues–I’m working on them).
Basically, good for you for realizing it wouldn’t work for you right now and for sharing it with the rest of us. I needed a giggle this morning. Aren’t the man poops fun? *gag* not. Even little girls get them.
I definitely admire all the moms who use cloth-diapers. I was completely planning to use them too once we got over the infant poop-all-the-time phase. And then our local baby specialty store closed, which is where I wanted to buy them. So, we’re still (pretty happily) using disposables. And, if it makes you feel better, I’m pretty sure all the trash in our state is incinerated.
That is hilarious. And, you’ve done more than I ever did. I looked at them online, admired how cute they were, and moved on. I can’t imagine I’d have the patience for them.
Love your blog! :)
I am very glad that day care having a disposables-only policy took the decision out of my hands. I hate killing the environment with the best of them but I also share a washer/dryer with two other units so it JUST. WOULDN’T. WORK.
Do not feel bad, I doubt either one will care once they are grown. Cloth/disposable, doesn’t matter, when you are showing the future girlfriend embarrassing baby pics.
Cloth diapering is what you make it. I threw tons of money at different nighttime solutions and then gave up. We use cloth during the day, disposables at night and on vacation. I am fine with that. I feel like we got our money back from the investment, so now every diaper is a win.
There is period about 4-7 months old where nighttime diapering is easy and they stop pooping every time you turn around. Hang on to them, try again when she’s a bit older and if you still don’t like it, sell your stash.
As for soaking/stripping, depending on what soap you are using, one wash with All F&C removed all of the stink from my diapers – no soaking required.
Eh, I never tried it. I was clueless about the modern cloth diapers with my first (all I could picture were the white cloth diapers with diapers pins and rubber panties over them that my mom used on us as babies), and decided not to try them. And with my second? Dude, I was ALL ABOUT making things as simple as possible in order to avoid losing my mind. And to me? Spraying poop off a diaper while the baby is pooping in the clean diaper right that minute while your three year old is peeing in her underwear? Yeah, that’s the opposite of fun times. Oh! Target totally has cute polka-dotted diapers that are wonderful…no leaks, stretchy tabs, etc. Just like Huggies but WAY cheaper. And cuter.
Well, you did better than me. I honestly never even considered cloth. Not because I hate the environment, but because I knew I wouldn’t stick with it.
I laughed and gagged my way through this post. You made a good effort.
The same thing happened to me. GREAT intentions when Shelby was first born. I had the stash and everything. Then the reality of having a newborn took over. Total cloth diapering fail. However, I gave cloth a go again within the last two months (Shelby’s now 10 months old). It’s MUCH easier. My secret? Diaper liners. They make the poop so much easier. You simply lift the liner out and flush everything in the toilet. Voila. However, if I had two kids in diapers I probably wouldn’t try cloth either.
I cloth diapered Hudson for over a year before we switched to compostable.
The twins are at 10 months & counting.
BUT it is so easy for me to be like “OMG! I LOVEEEE CLOTH DIAPERS!” because I don’t wash them. I do have to carry around dirty diapers when we are out & about which sucks- but when I get home I throw them in a diaper genie & once a week Scott gathers them all up & on Wednesday mornings while I am soundly sleeping the diaper fairy comes and leaves 100 new diapers and takes all the dirty cloth & all the dirty compostables. So I can’t really talk.
Having a cloth diaper service is easy. Washing diapers? I have no idea if I could make it. But having a service basically negates all eco friendly/money saving pros to cloth diapering. So I am basically not even a real cloth diaper-er.
I think the only reason we’ve been successful with cloth diapering is that we have a diaper service, meaning that we don’t have to really deal with the poop at all. We just throw it in the bin, and they pick everything up once a week. We do have to wash the diaper covers, but it’s been pretty easy. The sad thing is that it’s more expensive to cloth diaper when you use a service, so my husband is pushing to switch to disposables. They smell kind of weird, though, and his skin seems to like cloth better. Decisions, decisions….
SO- we cloth diapered our oldest for a year and a half. Only at home (the church nursery curled their nose up the first time I tried NOT bringing a disposable, even though I said page me if he goes and I’ll come change him myself). For running errands (if it wasn’t a quick one) and night time or vacation, we LUV’d it. It made life a little easier. Our reasoning then, was not eco-friendly either. We lived in base housing, and since water was free, we determined that several gallons of bleach a month was way cheaper than cases of diapers from the local warehouse store.
Baby number two came along, and I vowed to attempt the same. Although, water was no longer free (we had bought a house) it still had to be cheaper than buying diapers right? Well, Isabelle, with all her sensitiveness, HATED having a wet diaper on. She’d would barely pee and immediately fuss. I literally changed her ever 20-30 minutes. It was nuts. I gave it up after 3 days.
Baby number three came, and I am a frequent shopper at the warehouse store. Although once you get this many kids, you buy more than diapers! I GROCERY SHOP there!
Don’t beat yourself up. Or feel that you’ve let down a whole community of followers because you are human. When you’re a Mom, especially of more than one, you have to do what’s convenient and best for you.
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